Many industrial trades such as tile setting and grouting, concrete staining, wood floor refinishing, finish carpentry, electrical finishing, plumbing, and others, require workers to spend extended periods of the working day in compromising and dangerously unsupported kneeling positions. Due to the nature of these jobs, there is associated repetitive stress and pressure on many parts of the body during the workday. The positions the workers must be in have both acute and chronic effects on the health and longevity of the laborer. The prolonged and unsupported stress required to perform these duties can lead to musculoskeletal system overuse injuries. The spectrum of injury can result from deterioration of any of the overused joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles of the feet, ankles, knees, hips, pelvis, sacral spine, lumbar spine, thoracic spine and cervical spine, and neck.
These workers also spend a large amount of time bent over while kneeling. Over a workers lifetime, this secondary prolonged stress only compounds the above musculoskeletal disorders including accelerated osteoarthritis, ligamental and muscular strain, and ligamental and muscle tear. This can be in all of the body parts mentioned above.
Current recommendations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) call for the use of cushioned kneepads. Yet, cushioned kneepads only address one of the many stresses put on the body and do nothing to alleviate stress on the feet, ankles, hips, pelvis, and spine. They ultimately do little to alleviate anything but moderate to severe knee pain and gross deformation of the knees.
A number of apparatus have been proposed in the past to deal with the stresses on workers knees. U.S. Pat. No. 2,448,427 discloses a knee pad dolly. U.S. Pat. No. 3,976,155 discloses a cart that supports the worker's chest while laying tile. U.S. Pat. No. 5,380,021 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,427,391 disclose knee supports with attached wheels. U.S. Pat. No. 5,870,774, U.S. Pat. No. 5,937,440, U.S. Pat. No. 6,219,845, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,197,770 describe various configurations of strap-on knee pads with wheels. All of these inventions, however, ultimately fall short of alleviating the compounding stressors on the worker's body that can ultimately lead to injury of the unsupported body part directly or indirectly by compensatory overuse.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,302,413 describes a cart with a seat and knee supports. Yet as before, even this apparatus fails to fully alleviate the pressures applied to the worker's knees, Achilles tendon and lower back while working. Further, it does not facilitate stress-free movement around the work area, leading, in turn, to possible further injury.
The present invention seeks to mitigate the long-term risks of acute and chronic pain and arthritis associated with occupations requiring prolonged durations of kneeling, while improving job comfort and performance for workers in such occupations. This apparatus will lead to decreased immediate and long term disability claims and will lead to increased productivity, which is an investment for both labor and management.